“As long as justice is postponed we always stand on the verge of these darker nights of social disruption”...so said Martin Luther King Jr. in a speech on March 14, 1968, just three weeks before he was assassinated.

I would like to point our that this is issue #924 with the issue date as 9/24. Nothing Earth-shaking, but I thought it was interesting.

This week Conspiracy Journal takes a look at such migraine-inducing tales as:

-Scientists Still Puzzled by Fast Radio Bursts-- Other Dimensions, The Bible, and the Parting of the Red Sea-- The Abyss Of Paranormal Research -AND: "End of World" Message Alarmed TV Viewers

All these exciting stories and MORE in this week's issue of CONSPIRACY JOURNAL! ~ And Now, On With The Show! ~INSIDE THE SAUCERS

STUMBLE BACK INTO TIME WITH THE CREATION OF THIS GENUINE COLLECTOR’S REPRINT OF A RECENTLY REDISCOVERED UFO CLASSIC

HERE AFTER FIFTY YEARS ARE THE CONFESSIONS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A TEEN UFO RESEARCHER TURNED SPACED-OUT “STUD”

As UFO satirist and Exploring the Bizarre co-host Tim Beckley so righteously puts it, “A lot of boys my age were probably starting to think about girls and sneaking a peek at their father’s “Playboy” collection. Well, it took me a few years to get into the sins of the flesh (as it turned out, about ten years later I became a reporter for “Hustler” magazine). Instead, at 14 or 15, I was reading magazines like “Fate” and “Flying Saucers From Other Worlds.” And along the way I hooked up with a small collective of other blossoming teenage UFOlogists who eventually became the backbone of the field as it exists today.

“Allen Greenfield, Dave Halperin, Gene Steinberg, Rick Hilberg, Jerry Clark – this is as much the story of the early days of their calling as it is mine.”

Join the editors as we turn back the pages of history and stumble into the past with the reprint of this genuine collector’s edition of a UFO volume that was thought lost to the ages but was recently resurrected from the files of “Flying Saucer Digest” publisher Rick Hilberg.

In 1962, Tim Beckley placed a notice in the Club News section of “Flying Saucers” magazine requesting correspondence and an exchange of information with like-minded individuals willing to share their knowledge about those silvery ships seen around the world, best known in those days as “flying saucers.”

Through the personals column of this relatively obscure publication, he met several other teenagers who had started to form their own UFO organizations, so “Timmy” followed suit by setting up “The Interplanetary News Service,” which issued a semi-professional publication that garnered a worldwide circulation of 1500 plus. Many members of his “youth group” were well-established UFO experiencers and elder statesmen in the field. The INS became the third largest UFO group in the nation behind NICAP and APRO.

In order to finance his mushrooming enterprise, Beckley began to issue privately published UFO “books” and literature that would help “further the cause” and defray his expenses. INSIDE THE SAUCERS was the first such work. It was printed on an old fashioned (appropriately enough) spirit duplicator, and had a print run of 300 copies which sold out in a matter of months. This “new” edition is an exact replica of that first work, with only an addition of a several photos and the elimination of typos.

Regardless of the age of the authors, as can be rapidly determined, the writing is polished and sophisticated for its time in the history of UFO research. In this reprint of a rare collector’s item, you will become personally involved in a discussion of the following “long lost” topics: – A possible solution to the mystery of the Men In Black; – How some UFOs may be the product of Nazi technology (a prediction made years before this concept was put forward seriously elsewhere); – Possible synchronicities associated with the Great Pyramid; The Unidentified Submerged Object that plunged into a New Jersey reservoir; A recap of the most dramatic UFO sightings and encounters from this period by “UFO Encyclopedia” author Jerome Clark; A detailed summary of 15 years of UFO research by George D. Fawcett; AND MUCH MORE!

A tribute from the reigning master of the paranormal, Brad Steiger, who has these fond comments: “Bless all those Teen UFOlogists! – They were great supporters of a young Brad as he began his UFO career with “Strangers From The Skies” in 1966. . . and they remain dear friends today. Forever allies!”

This Book, Thought Lost Forver, is Now Available for the Bargain Price of Only$10.00

So don't delay, order your copy of Hidden Treasures of the Knights Templar

Scientists searching for fast radio bursts that some believe may be signals sent from aliens may be happening every second.

What was once thought to be a rare phenomenon might be occurring each and every moment of the day, experts say.

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are radio emissions that appear temporarily and randomly, making them not only hard to find, but also hard to study.

The mystery stems from the fact it is not known what could produce such a short and sharp burst.

If the mysterious phenomena is indeed a sign of intelligent life in the universe, the latest findings could suggest it is far more widespread than previously thought.

Researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CFA) have estimated how many Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) should occur over the entire observable universe.

Their work indicates that at least one FRB is going off somewhere every second.

When fast radio bursts (FRBs), were first detected in 2001, astronomers had never seen anything like them before.

Since then, they have found a couple of dozen FRBs, but they still don't know what causes these rapid and powerful bursts of radio emission.

Anastasia Fialkov of the CFA, who led the study, said: 'If we are right about such a high rate of FRBs happening at any given time, you can imagine the sky is filled with flashes like paparazzi taking photos of a celebrity.

'Instead of the light we can see with our eyes, these flashes come in radio waves.

'In the time it takes you to drink a cup of coffee, hundreds of FRBs may have gone off somewhere in the Universe,' added study co-author Avi Loeb.

'If we can study even a fraction of those well enough, we should be able to unravel their origin.'

To make their estimate, the scientists assumed that FRB 121102, a fast radio burst located in a galaxy about three billion light years away, is representative of all FRBs.

Because this FRB has produced repeated bursts since its discovery in 2002, astronomers have been able to study it in much more detail than other FRBs.

Using that information, they projected how many FRBs would exist across the entire sky.

While their exact nature is still unknown, most scientists think FRBs originate in galaxies billions of light years away.

One leading idea is that FRBs are the byproducts of young, rapidly spinning neutron stars with extraordinarily strong magnetic fields.

Fialkov and Loeb point out that FRBs can be used to study the structure and evolution of the Universe whether or not their origin is fully understood.

A large population of faraway FRBs could act as probes of material across gigantic distances.

This intervening material blurs the signal from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the left over radiation from the Big Bang.

A careful study of this intervening material should give an improved understanding of basic cosmic constituents, such as the relative amounts of ordinary matter, dark matter and dark energy, which affect how rapidly the universe is expanding.

FRBs can also be used to trace what broke down the 'fog' of hydrogen atoms that pervaded the early universe into free electrons and protons, when temperatures cooled down after the Big Bang.

It is generally thought that ultraviolet (UV) light from the first stars traveled outwards to ionize the hydrogen gas, clearing the fog and allowing this UV light to escape.

Studying very distant FRBs will allow scientists to study where, when and how this process of 'reionization' occurred.

'FRBs are like incredibly powerful flashlights that we think can penetrate thise fog and be seen over vast distances,' added Dr Fialkov.

'This could allow us to study the 'dawn' of the universe in a new way.'

Other Dimensions, Physics, The Bible, and the Parting of the Red Sea By Sean Casteel

Science and religion could end up complementing each other. New – more “radical” – trends in physics point to the existence of parallel universes and other dimensions which could assist in explaining many Biblical mysteries and miracles, at least according to one Protestant minister who has spent a half century pondering the reality of UFOs and extraterrestrials and their possible connection to the seemingly bizarre and unexplainable tales of the Old and New Testaments.

Reverend Barry Downing, who resides in upstate New York, was among the first to see that it wasn’t a given that the “good book” was in conflict with the lore of the flying saucer and the possibility that our universe might be constructed of a bit more than just physical matter. He posited that heaven could be a real place – if not in our timeline then perhaps in a parallel existence just beyond our reach. Could that other dimension possibly be accessible through the guidance of Godly ultra-terrestrial beings and their vehicles? What we think of as spaceships could, in some cases, be divine.

*** Reverend Barry Downing has been preaching the gospel of “UFO angels” for nearly 50 years now, since the publication of his 1968 book, “The Bible and Flying Saucers.” Downing has recently released a new book called “Biblical UFO Revelations” that incorporates hard won wisdom and perspectives gleaned in the intervening years as he steadfastly continues to make his case for his particular take on Christianity and the aliens.

*** Downing is not just an ordained minister and a religious expert, he is also well-versed in physics, having earned his bachelor’s degree in the field. So he is uniquely qualified to analyze Biblical miracles like the parting of the Red Sea from the Exodus both scientifically and as a man of faith. Read more about the “environmental impact” that the pillar of cloud and fire exerted for the sake of the fleeing Israelites.

*** How does one approach the extreme levels of fear experienced by witnesses to angels in the Bible? Is the fear a UFO witness experiences an example of that same kind of fear? Are we actually wise to approach the two phenomena in abject terror and trembling? At what point does a heavenly love enter the picture and cast out all fear?

*******

I was on the air this past summer with Timothy Green Beckley and Tim Swartz, the hosts of the KCOR podcast “Exploring the Bizarre,” with their special guest, the Presbyterian minister Dr. Barry Downing. In a commercial break, during which we all chatted but the audience could not hear us, Downing informed us that he had sufficient new material for a physical/print book.

Thinking quickly on his feet, Tim Beckley wasted no time in offering to publish Downing’s more recent writings through Beckley’s company Global Communications/Inner Light. And so the process began for “Biblical UFO Revelations,” a book that is a long overdue reprise from an important pioneer in the ancient aliens school of UFO interpretation.

Downing made his initial entry into the UFO community in 1968 with his groundbreaking tome “The Bible and Flying Saucers.” The book explored the possibility of extraterrestrial influence in the development of the Old and New Testaments, with particular emphasis on the notion that one can equate the “angels” of the Bible with the “aliens” of our modern era. Which, at the time, was fairly new and unfamiliar territory for the relatively young field of UFO research.

Before writing that first book, Downing had already earned a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburg in Scotland. His dissertation, called “Eschatological Implications of the Understanding of Time and Space in the Thought of Isaac Newton,” combined the religious, the philosophical and the scientific into the kind of whole that would serve Downing well in his years spent researching and writing about UFOs.

When Downing returned from Scotland in May of 1966, he set up shop in his in-laws’ basement and wrote his book while he awaited his first church assignment as a newly ordained minister. He finished the writing one week before taking a job at the Northminster Presbyterian Church in Endwell, New York, in February 1967, and the book came out the following year.

“I was hopeful that conservative Christians would be more positive than liberal Christians,” Downing told me by email. “It turned out to be the case that neither liberals nor conservatives liked my book. So in a sense I was treated ‘fairly’ by both sides.”

THE ‘ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT’ OF A UFO

The parting of the Red Sea is particularly interesting to Downing, and he gives it 20 pages of examination in “The Bible and Flying Saucers” and devotes a chapter to it in the new book, “Biblical UFO Revelations.”

“My argument is that the Exodus UFO, the pillar of cloud and fire,” he explained, “which appeared cloud-like during the day and glowed in the dark, used its propulsion system to split the waters of the Red Sea and save Israel from the Egyptians. The reason the parting of the Red Sea is so important is that it tells us in detail the environmental impact of the UFO presence. Modern researchers go to landing spots with Geiger counters and all kinds of equipment in order to study the environmental impact of a flying saucer landing. Exodus 14:19-30 is a very detailed environmental impact statement.”

Downing says he differs from the standard biblical interpretation that a “strong wind” was used to part the sea, because a wind strong enough to do that would also have blown Moses and the Israelites into the sky. The biblical text says the ground was dry when the Israelites crossed over, but since the escape was taking place at night, it could not have been dried by the sun. Downing suggests that some kind of microwave effect may have been involved.

“I believe the best explanation for the parting of the Red Sea,” he said, “is that the pillar of cloud and fire was some type of spaceship, and those in charge of the spaceship planned the parting of the sea well in advance, to save Israel from the Egyptians and to keep Israel from going back to Egypt, once the Jews discovered that the whole Exodus process was not a walk in the park.”

THE NEW PHYSICS: WHAT THE YEARS HAVE TAUGHT DOWNING

Downing has kept up with the worlds of UFOlogy and physics. His bachelor’s degree is in physics, which he earned while on scholarship at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York.

“When I published ‘The Bible and Flying Saucers’ in 1968,” Downing writes in “Biblical UFO Revelations,” “I had one major concern about connecting UFOs to biblical angels. The biblical view of angels was they were eternal beings, they had eternal life. My understanding of the scientific worldview at that time was that we live in a ‘running down universe,’ meaning that at some time in the future the universe will run out of energy and die. If this were true, then no one living in this universe could be eternal.

“I began to explore the possibility,’ he continues, “that there might be more than one universe, that there might be a way to escape from the space-time continuum of our universe into a world that did not decay, did not run down. I thought Einstein’s Theory of Relativity offered us the freedom to explore some possibilities within the framework of the as yet unfinished science of advanced physics. With that in mind, I began to look at the New Testament ideas of the angelic world, looking for ‘some way out’ of our universe, and looked for the possibility that UFOs did not come from our universe, but rather from another dimension.”

These ideas are a large part of chapter five of the first book. Downing’s optimistic search for a dimension that is truly eternal was met by the typical scorn his work receives from mainstream Christianity.

“The Christianity Today review of my book,” Downing writes, “was predictably negative about Chapter Five. ‘Space does not permit a complete account of the scientific distortions contained in the book. In the preface, Downing states that he is not an authority on Einstein or on heaven. This does not deter him, however, from devoting a chapter to the question, “Where Is Heaven?” He admits that his discussion reads very much like science fiction and is not necessarily true, but it may, he says, “help to set our minds free from the somewhat depressing agnosticism we now find ourselves in when we even begin to entertain the idea that we might live eternally – as part of God’s plan.” He then proceeds, with complete abandon, to do violence to both Einstein and heaven with over 20 pages of pure speculation.’”

[The review, which was published in the June 21, 1968, issue of Christianity Today, was written by Albert L. Hedrich and entitled “Flying Saucers in the Bible?”]

“Liberals do not want me to take stories like the parting of the Red Sea literally,” Downing writes, “they want it to be poetry, mythology. They want to keep science out of the Bible. Religion is not about reality. It is about something that we make up in our heads, much like music and poetry. Religion may have a beauty about it, it may represent human psychological longings, but it has nothing to do with the physical world.

“The issue with conservatives is quite different,” he goes on. “It has been around 50 years since the publication of my book and I still can’t understand the conservative attack on my work. The conservative Christian mentality seems to be this: the church is a fort, the fort protects the basic treasure we have, which is the gospel, and the task of Christians is to attack all enemies who are trying to destroy the fort. They might be atheists (or other non-Christian religions, New Age mysticism, etc.) or they might be false prophets, or, as Gary Bates says of me, ‘former believers who have fallen away.’ Within this assumption, everyone has to be tested to see if he or she is a true believer or an enemy.”

Downing says it is obvious that the point of view of people like Hedrich is that Downing is the enemy, having done violence to both Einstein and heaven. Downing’s speculation amounts to bombs being dropped on the Christian fort.

“Does Hedrich know where heaven is?” Downing asks. “If he does, he does not tell us in his review. Apparently he thinks it is sinful even to wonder about it. Since when is being full of wonder a sin? Since when is it a sin to believe that ‘with God all things are possible?’” (Matthew 19:26)

The church is not a fort built to defend the gospel, according to Downing. God himself is our fort. We are not called to live in a fort, we are called to live in the wilderness with God, on a journey where we are moving toward the kingdom of God.

“If you hole up in a fort, you will not arrive at the kingdom of heaven,” Downing cautions. “The incarnation of Christ means this journey through the wilderness is so important to God that God became human in Jesus, and lived, and died, on the journey with us. On this trip, we look for signs of buried treasure.” (Matthew 13:44)

THE UFO PHENOMENON AS ‘BURIED TREASURE’

For around 50 years now, Downing has been pointing at UFOs and saying, “This may be buried treasure hidden for us to find.”

The UFOs are not buried in dirt, of course.

“They’re buried by the greed and lust for power of the military-industrial complex,” he writes, “which decided years ago that UFO truth needed to be kept from us. Our modern Pharaohs are no different from the Pharaoh who challenged the God of Moses. I suspect that many world leaders did not want us to even think about the possibility that the angels of God are not only watching us, but are, on occasion, shutting down our nuclear missile sites.

“And I suspect that for many conservative Christians, defending fortress America and fortress Gospel are so similar, that seeing UFOs as demons, rather than angels, enemies of both America’s military power, and enemies of the Gospel, was a very natural way to interpret the UFO mystery. This is my best understanding of why I am not only the enemy of liberal Protestants, but also conservative Protestants. By and large, it is Roman Catholics who have not demonized me.”

THE ROLE FEAR PLAYS IN THE UFO DRAMA

When I interviewed Downing by email for an introduction to “Biblical UFO Revelations,” I asked him about how fear often plays a major role in the UFO drama, especially in terms of the alien abduction experience.

“We are inclined to think fear is a bad thing,” he replied, “and in a sense it is. If God in His essence is love, then ‘There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.’ (1 John 4:18) At the same time, we are called, according to Paul, ‘to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.’ (Philippians 2:12) The biblical view is, the closer we come to knowing God’s love, the less we will fear. Nevertheless, inclined as we are to sin, to pride, to jealousy, we need to live our lives in fear and trembling, aware that we are never more than a bad thought away from offending God and hurting the divine love bond.

“Fear is very much a dimension of our modern UFO story,” he continued. “One reason for governments of the world keeping UFO information secret is that release of the information would lead to panic, the stock market would crash, the world economy would be destroyed.”

Downing also offered an interesting analogy.

“If a stranger walks into my house and points a gun at me, fear will be my response, and it is a very appropriate response. I may die if I do not fear the intruder; I may die even if I do fear the intruder. But fear in this situation gives me a survival edge, a better chance of not being killed. I will treat the stranger with the gun with respect. The basic idea of God is that He is the one with the gun. He has the power to take our life, or save it, even to raise us from the dead. So fear of God as a sign of respect is an appropriate response.”

When the angels appeared to the shepherds in the fields, Downing said, fear was the understandable response of the shepherds. “The angel said to the shepherds, ‘Be not afraid, for behold, I bring you news of great joy.’ (Luke 2:10) Fear of angels when they appear is a frequent response reported in the Bible. An angel of God descended from the sky and rolled back the tomb where Jesus was buried. ‘And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men.’ (Matthew 28:4)

“Whenever we meet a strange power greater than ourselves, fear is a natural response. It is a frequent response for by those who have a UFO encounter, or have an abduction experience, or have a bedroom visitation from an alien. Fear of aliens is no more proof they are evil than fear of angels proves THEY are evil.”

Downing also commented on the abduction experiences of Betty Andreasson Luca and Whitley Strieber, calling their stories “mini forms of disclosure.”

“They are not disclosure at a political level,” Downing said, “that is, landing on the White House lawn and saying ‘Take me to your leader.’ But modern UFO abductions are a limited form of disclosure, examples of what I call ‘targeted intervention.’ The Second Coming of Christ, according to Christian hope, would be a form of an angelic army invasion. At the same time, the biblical story of the angel at the tomb of Jesus, or the conversion of the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, represent forms of ‘targeted intervention.’

“The story of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt seems to be something like a major invasion,” he continued, “but the ‘pillar of cloud and fire’ keeps its distance from both Pharaoh and the Jewish people. And the Jewish story has spiritual and moral power in human culture to this day – proof that targeted intervention can have consequences for human culture for thousands of years.

“The work of the pillar of cloud and fire during the Exodus should make us aware that, even if modern UFOs are working for our good, they represent a power of judgment over us such that ‘fear and trembling’ may be a very wise response to the UFO presence.”

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- PSYCHIC BACKLASH DEPARTMENT -

The Abyss Of Paranormal ResearchBy The Scarlet Woman

Two years ago while I was researching some allegedly haunted locations with my paranormal partner in crime, Matt Cook, I came across some amazingly fascinating synchronicities. The way information seemingly lined up was almost unbelievable. In fact, I would watch old local news videos on youtube about haunted locations and a week later meet these people in completely unrelated situations. Sometimes I would bring the topics of ghosts up myself, sometimes I didn’t have to, it came to the front all on its own. I related one of those stories in Synchronicity & Haunted Beban House but there were many other instances.

This flow of events and connecting with people to gather information and old stories is what makes paranormal research exciting and worth engaging in. However, there is another side to Forteana that is darker and less talked about. It is a phenomenon known as psychic backlash and I suspect it is much more common, and with serious consequences, than anyone would believe. What is a psychic backlash you ask? Well, let’s take some time to get grounded first and I will explain.

Psychic backlash is an occurrence that can happen during paranormal investigations when the phenomenon under study becomes aware that it is being watched, tracked and evaluated. The backlash happens when an investigator is deeply immersed in a topic over a longer period of time and usually is focused intensely on the paranormal events. This intense focus makes the object of investigation agitated and it in a sense lashes back that intensity at the investigator. This “backlash” can manifest in a variety of ways, but it usually starts off slowly and builds. Essentially what is happening is that as a paranormal investigator an abyss is being opened and peered into and as the Nietzsche quote goes:

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

So what can possibly happen by researching a little ghost story you ask? Well, that depends on the ghost, or the topic and the investigator’s relation to it. I will use myself as an example. As I mentioned earlier in this blog, I experienced some amazing synchronicities, but when our focus got intense, life went extremely chaotic. It started off as light feelings of sadness in the house and bouts of anxiety by some people who visited. We attracted strange friends into our lives and my job that I had just started turned out to be the most miserable place to work, with co-workers being rather indifferent to me.

Now I didn’t make any connections right away – at all. All these things could be explained rationally. The weather was rainy, I was working in finance, or people are assholes, that’s all. However, as it escalated into other areas it became obvious something was not right at all. I started being unable to meet my goals and make sales at work, which happens sometimes so I fluffed it off because I was a newbie. But this, of course, affected finances and had me start using savings or credit to get by. This was all normal to me, possibly to be expected.

Then one morning I got up and walked out into the living room and in front of me a Scentsy wax warmer shot off the shelf and onto the floor, it completely defied gravity. I was baffled. It happened right before my eyes. I had never seen anything move like that without the aid of human force. I didn’t panic, I just continued on as you do. Of course, things were going to get much more strange. I started getting phone calls from Matt while I was at work saying he was hearing intermittent banging on the walls and he checked to see if it was the landlord upstairs, but they were not home.

Next, it was strange thoughts in our minds that none of us had before. Thoughts of people hanging or not wanting to exist began to enter our minds. I thought perhaps it was too much stress and that we just had to work harder and make more cash. Then suddenly my son’s grades started to fall when he had always been a strong student. Everyone seemed to have a real dark energy about them all of the sudden. One night we were looking for Matt’s e-cig and we literally tore the entire living room apart. We cleared off every item on the coffee table and lifted up every cushion on the couch. We just couldn’t find it anywhere. We sat back on the couch rather perplexed and when we looked up, there it was right on the table we had just cleared.

Those were just some of the issues that ensued and it got worse before it got better. Could it have all been just bad circumstances? Certainly, it could have been, but I have to admit, I’ve never had so many odd and outright disastrous things happen all at once. As soon as Matt had to part back for the UK, I decided to do some serious grounding and changes and it all literally ceased. My finances improved, I got a new job and new projects came my way, my son’s grades went back up and of course, all strange thoughts ceased and paranormal activities happened no longer.

I now write for TCF blog, but I am wary of getting intensely involved less I undo all the stuff I have currently built up. So what can one do as paranormal investigators that will help prevent or lessen this psychic backlash? Do other career area’s get this experience as well? Psychics, artists, fringe scientist? And is it all the person’s psychology? Or as I explained earlier, is it really a force lashing back at us, almost putting us back to the normal status quo in order for “it” to avoid being discovered?

On the fringe radio show, Where Did The Road Go? they talked about the idea that belief creates a gateway on one of their shows. One thing that stood out was that a remedy to avoid this “falling apart’ of your life, is to mix your research with well scheduled normal activities. It’s a daily way of grounding yourself in reality and not feeding the abyss to the point that it consumes you. You may have seen psychics practice grounding and protection rituals in order to ensure that whatever it is they pursue, does not end up pursuing them, or worse consuming them. Myself I work mornings in fitness, mix up my life with graphic design and regular fitness activities. This summer everyone took a big break from writing on this blog to do other summer activities.

It is not uncommon for paranormal groups to break up often and I wonder if psychic backlash has something to do with it. CFZ’s Jon Downes testifies his own experiences when working on a novel and how it broke apart his life. It seems that there is some force that is content on not being discovered and perhaps it indeed reflects our worst back on us to make sure we stop solid in our tracks. Of course, most of us always end up returning for more…

A cool October breeze brushed Len Berroth as he stood at his front door in 2006. Len, of DeLand, Fla., thought he was at the end of three mostly sleepless nights and a seven-hour drive.

But something wasn’t right at Len’s house.“Sleep depravation lifted the veil between parallel plains that coexist at different vibration levels would be my guess,” Len said. “What showed itself was not of this world yet interacted with dwellings, objects, landscape surroundings as if it were theirs.”

The world around Len rippled, sending streaks of light dancing past him, as his perception of reality changed. For the next nine and a half hours, he watched his neighborhood team with life that shouldn’t be.

Like the giants.

“Three giant beings were visible, human-like … except in height. They ducked their heads to go under the wires on the telephone poles,” Len said. “The tops of their heads were even with the roof tops.”

The giants gently groomed bushes and trees as they made their way down the neighborhood.

“It looked like they were twining rope from the leaves and branches,” Len said.

His neighbors across the street were on vacation, but as Len stood at his door, two SUVs pulled in the neighbor’s drive and six “average-looking people” got out of the SUVs and spent several hours talking, never approaching the house.

“Positioning myself for a better look across the street I heard the sound of grass being ripped up behind me,” Len said. “Turning, I saw my two 15-foot high, elephant yard adornments grazing the front lawn. Their trunks yanked the grass up, feeding to their mouths while slowly walking around the yard.”

Tires sliding across pavement drew Len’s eyes back to the SUVs which, like the giants and the lawn ornaments, were alive.

“The two SUVs were acting like a pair of grazing buffalo,” Len said. “Their tires scraped at the driveway as their front ends dipped down till the bumpers touched the ground as if eating. I did go over the next day and have pictures showing erratic black rubber markings on the concrete consistent with what I saw.”

The “average-looking people” didn’t seem to notice the activity because they were interested in something else.

“I saw one person in their group holding what I’ll describe as box-like, four inches high, 14 inches deep, 18 inches wide, a series of different colored lights forming several rows,” he said.

The others circled around the man with the box as a sequence of colored lights turned on and off in a pattern. Len said the box was a signal light.

“The group now looked up to the night sky, then I saw hovering about 2,000 feet above us was a saucer-shaped craft completely silent, then it’s underbelly lit up as rows of colored lights flashed the same sequence toward the ground,” Len said. “Just then six beings appeared on the sidewalk in front of that house, they were in mid stride when they popped out of nowhere.”

The beings were eight-feet tall, slender and dressed in black, hooded robes.

“They seemed relevant to the space craft as the colored light exchange stopped,” Len said. Then the beings dressed in black disappeared as did the craft. “The craft shot from sight directly after the black robed beings disappeared.”

That wasn’t the end. Len later saw what he described as Neanderthals milling for hours in his yard until a friend of his pulled up to his house.

“Ten of them were in my front yard, taking no notice as a friend pulled up next to them,” he said. “These beings acted like we weren’t there as I met my friend at the curb, she couldn’t see them.

“Tell me you don’t see these people,” Len demanded of his friend. “‘Nobody’s there,’ was her response. The commotion from my raised voice caused the people that signaled the UFO to walk toward us.”

The people crossed the road and stopped several feet from Len and his friend.

“You know I can see you,” Len thought, and a voice in his head said “yes.”

Len grabbed his friend’s arm and ran into his house. A year later, Len is convinced his experience was not caused by sleep deprivation, but by our dimension merging with dimensions we don’t normally see.

“That night, trees and plants took active roles, exposing their living spirits as being more in tune to surroundings, quite capable of telepathic exchange,” he said. “But that’s another story in itself.”

The Christian Bible has a story about Jesus Christ feeding 5,000 people with a few pieces of bread and fish. Not only did they have their fill, but several baskets of leftovers were collected.

This act is considered a miracle in Christianity. Today, the science of parapsychology calls it “materialization,” “producing something out of nothing.”

Stage magicians and illusionists, like the world-renowned David Copperfield, can make birds appear out of nowhere and even make a live elephant disappear in front of a large crowd. But they do these by sleight-of-hand, illusion or trickery.

I have personally seen cases of materialization that are not products of illusion or trickery. One involved Sri Lankan spiritual guru Swami Premananda. He just moves his hand, palm down, in the air. When he turns his palm up, a statue of a Hindu god, or crucifix or anything suddenly appears on it.

He has done this countless of times before various audiences. I’ve also seen video tapes of more spectacular materializations performed by the Indian guru Swami Satya Sai Baba.

Strict scientific observations have been done by western investigators on these two spiritual teachers with extraordinary psychic powers. No one has ever proved that any one of them is performing trickery. They were genuine materializations.

Our world-famous Filipino faith healers and psychic surgeons are also able to materialize things. But what they materialize are diseased tissues or flesh and blood, not birds or elephants. They also materialize objects inserted into victims’ bodies through sorcery or black magic, such as broken glass, cockroaches, nails, egg shells, hair, plastic ropes, etc.

How is materialization done? There are different ways of doing this. One is through sheer mental power.

A person must be able to visualize in very clear and vivid detail the object he wishes to materialize. He must be able to see, feel, taste, smell and hear the object. He must also have a strong desire or intention to make that object appear physically in front of him. And he must be able to slow down his brain waves to the Delta level (almost zero to four cycles per second) without falling asleep. These are the conditions for materialization to take place.

In the late ’80s, I observed a poor man named Estong materialize coins from his mouth on the streets of Edsa Central in Mandaluyong City. Bus and jeepney drivers would give him, for example, 25-centavo coins. He would put the coin in his empty mouth and when he opened it, a one-peso coin had replaced the 25-centavo coin.

Others are able to materialize things with the help of some spirit helpers or guides and not just through their mental powers. These people are able to get such spirits to do their bidding.

Materialization need not be immediate or instantaneous, like what Swami Premananda or Swami Sai Baba does. It can be over a period of time. But the result is the same eventually, namely, the sudden physical appearance of something desired.

For example, a housewife one afternoon wanted to eat a banana but it was not being sold nearby. After a while, that same afternoon, somebody knocked on her door, a banana vendor. He said it was not his usual route. Isn’t this a case of materialization, too?

There are many examples of this type of materialization in daily life. A boy wishing to have a particular toy receives it as a gift, although he told no one about it. A lowly employee wanting to own an expensive camera he couldn’t afford suddenly gets one from a cousin who unexpectedly arrives from Saudi Arabia.

A regular reader of this column sent me recently a text message saying, on many occasions, what she had in mind would just come to her or would be offered to her without her telling anybody about it.

If one argues that only God can make miracles, like making things appear out of nowhere, tell him that Jesus Christ himself said in the Bible: (John 14:12) “All the works that I have done you can do, and much more than these.”

When Phil and Kim Kirchhoff purchased an old home on Northeast First Street in Mineral Wells three years ago, they had intentions of restoring the more than 100-year-old white house as a fun family project.

But today, Kim "won't even go up there," Phil says. He won't mow the lawn, not even in the middle of the day. The ghosts — some adults, some children — come out at all hours, Phil says.

"That house is as wacky in the middle of the day as it is at night," he says. The two have never lived at the home and say they never will.

The Haunted Hill House, as it's now called, was known as a site for paranormal activity before the Kirchhoffs purchased it for an undisclosed price. That would have been good information to have in advance, Phil says: "We started having this estate sale" to sell stuff inside the home, Phil explains, "and all the neighbors started telling us ghost stories."

The Kirchhoffs soon realized they wouldn't be fixing up 501 NE First St. Not with the female ghost who, allegedly, hums happily in the kitchen, and the ghost-child named Joshua who, allegedly, talks to houseguests.

While Phil had never been interested in paranormal activity before, he has become an impromptu ghost host on the weekends. (He works as a senior quality analyst at a computer company full time during the week.) Phil meets paranormal investigators and others interested in experiencing ghost activity a few evenings a month, and for $200 or $250 a night, Phil and others summon the spirits at Haunted Hill House.

He tells stories of a few dozen people who have been scratched, which Phil says he learned is a "classic" experience during ghost hunting. He even tells the story of one man who was pushed to the ground by some force, left with "bruises" that Phil describes as "a thumbprint and four fingerprints."

The "children spirits," he explains, "like to get on your back. They'll sit beside you."

Still, Phil only "halfway" believes in ghosts now, he says. "I think people are afraid to say they believe in ghosts because that throws you into a category of Big Foot and demons." An anthropologist with a degree from the University of Texas, Phil is a fossil hunter who decided that the haunted house that "just fell into my lap" was interesting for a time. But it should be somebody else's project now.

He's selling the Mineral Wells home for an asking price of $125,000. He says he won't sell it to someone who wants to demolish the home. He hopes to hand it off as a "paranormal research center" to someone who wants to continue the Haunted Hill House business.

Haunted Hill House is a three-bedroom, two-bath home. Or is it three baths? A third bathroom was sealed up for unknown reasons before the Kirchhoffs bought it. ("We didn't find it for a year," Phil says.) The home is 2,800 square feet and is located in a primo spot for ghost hunters, near the Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells that has been featured on Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures.

So far, Phil has gotten some interest in the home — but no offers yet.

Some Orange County, California residents were stunned Thursday, Sept. 21, when television programming was suddenly interrupted for about a minute with an ominous message predicting the end of the world.

Stacy Laflamme of Lake Forest said she was watching the HGTV channel via Cox Communications about 11:05 a.m. when suddenly an emergency alert flashed across her screen followed by a voice.

“Realize this, extremely violent times will come,” a man’s voice boomed, according to a video of the alert.

Laflamme said she was alarmed.

“It almost sounded like Hitler talking,” she said. “It sounded like a radio broadcast coming through the television.”

In addition to Cox, Spectrum cable customers in Orange County received the alert.

Erin Mireles of Diamond Bar was watching the Bravo channel on Spectrum’s cable system when her show was interrupted by the alert.

“I was definitely startled, ’cause the volume increased exponentially,” she said. “I wasn’t alarmed in the sense of thinking something was wrong, ’cause I assumed it was some sort of hack. My channel changed back to Bravo after a couple minutes.”

The mysterious alert became a hot topic on social media.

The problem occurred because of one or more radio stations conducting an emergency test, Joe Camero, a spokesman for Cox, said Thursday.

Cable systems pick up such alerts, and viewers should have seen just a typical emergency-broadcast test.

“With these tests, an emergency tone is sent out to initiate the test,” Camero said. “After the tone is transmitted, another tone is sent to end the message. It appears that the radio station (or stations) did not transmit the end tone to complete the test.”

Then the broadcast picked up some audio feed that bled into the alert.

Camero said Cox technicians shut down the emergency test as soon as they became aware of the problem.

“We don’t want to alarm anyone with any false emergency alerts,” he said.

Cox and Spectrum are investigating who sent out the alert and whether it was done accidentally or on purpose. It was unclear where the audio came from.

“We have confirmed that we were fed an incorrect audio file,” said Dennis Johnson, a spokesman for Spectrum.

Officials now say that the end-of-the-world message was a technical glitch prompted by a local radio station. KWVE-FM, a Santa Ana station that broadcasts Christian programs, was conducting the test for the region that did not properly kick off – prompting a pastor’s comments meant only for that station to be heard over TV and probably radio channels in the county and beyond.

“During a regularly scheduled test of the Emergency Alert System for Orange County, KWVE-FM experienced an equipment failure that resulted in KWVE-FM not sending the end-of-message tones that would disconnect those media entities participating in the Emergency Alert System test,” a statement from the station says.

“When KWVE-FM resumed its regular programming, approximately 90 seconds of that audio was sent to the rest of the participants of the Emergency Alert System test.”

KWVE-FM has volunteered to be the primary Emergency Alert System station for the area since the inception of the alerts in 1996 and has never experienced a similar equipment failure, the statement says.

“The piece of equipment that failed has been sent back to the manufacturer in an effort to understand how the failure happened and to remedy the situation so that it will not happen again,” the statement says.

Joe Camero, a spokesman for Cox Communications, among the cable networks that picked up the gaffe, said the system’s rare burp is why tests are held.

“Finding equipment failures is exactly what regular testing is supposed to do,” he said. “KWVE has sent literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of tests … and the vast majority of them go off without a hitch.”

It was apparently a broadcast from Pastor Chuck Swindoll, the leader of a Texas-based church, during the program “Insight for Life.” At the time he was discussing end-of-times prophecy.

The announcer introduced the sermon, “Depravity on Parade,” with a Bible Scripture from the Second Book of Timothy: “Realize this, Timothy, that in the last days difficult times will come.”

Swindoll then repeated the line during the cablecast.

Bill Gemaehlich, chief operating officer for “Insight for Life,” said on Friday the sermon was recorded more than a year ago at Swindoll’s Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Texas, and was scheduled several months ago to air on Thursday.

Coincidentally, the air date was just two days before a doomsday prediction by David Meade, a self-described “specialist in research and investigations” was supposed to play out. Meade said he believed catastrophic events were suppose to happen on Saturday ushering in the end of the world.

“It’s not like we planned the broadcast to coincide with that,” Gemaehlich said. “It was just a fluke thing. Pastor Swindoll would never try to line something up with that. He is a very conservative, sound theologian and not a conspiracy person.”

Though it is unclear how many customers were affected, Camero said the message would have gone out mostly to those in Orange County and just beyond. Viewers in Diamond Bar also reported seeing the message.